The four pieces on the program that Philadanco brought for its Boston debut last weekend at the Institute for Contemporary Art were all-dance numbers showcasing a troupe of highly polished, supercharged dancers. Except for one sextet of women, each work marshaled 10 or more members of the company's 16-person roster. Despite the jam-packed choreography and the unremittingly high-performance intensities, by the end of the evening they looked even more revved up than they'd been at the start.

Founded in 1970, Philadanco is Philadelphia's answer to Alvin Ailey, a company of mostly African-American dancers who've mastered the gamut of contemporary styles. Their choreography comes with messages of uplift and reflection, but the dances themselves — at least the ones we saw here — don't detour us away from the pure pleasures of physicality. They differed in big issues of style and mood, but all the choreographers were working with small chunks of group arrangements, people streaming in and out with little to distinguish them from their companions.

The program started with a revival of the late Gene Hill Sagan's 1983 Ritornello, which is choreographed to a familiar score with a daunting predecessor. Bach's Double Violin Concerto is also the music for George Balanchine's Concerto Barocco, a classic in the ballet repertory. Sagan's alternative was enjoyable if not profound.

Four men and six women used a hybrid vocabulary of ballet and modern-dance steps — fast chaînû turns, running, skipping, stag jumps borrowed from Martha Graham. The arms were always in motion, curling and spreading in an effect that modern dancers like Paul Taylor have used to extend and glamorize the non-balletic body. To the slow second movement, two couples danced almost entirely in tandem. When the men weren't tipping the women up in odd, angular lifts, they made pliant plastique shapes to set off the women's pointe-free bourrûes, arabesques, and developpûs.

Rennie Harris proposed a social history in Philadelphia Experiment, but the theme of slavery and its legacy of urban despair was assigned to photographs projected on the backdrop and a singer insistently exhorting us to remember past abuses. The dance itself was a fast, punchy montage of hip-hop, boogie, and sassy street attitude. It looked like a chorus for a music video or a rap show to me.

At the end, as the audience screamed its head off, the stage lights came on again. A leader (unidentified as such in the program notes), who'd strutted around and solo'd during the piece, pumped up the audience even more as the cast returned for a long, choreographed encore with more boogieing and little specialty bits.

Christopher L. Huggins contributed two pieces. From Dawn 'til Dusk was a small ensemble for women set to Bobby McFerrin riffing on spiritual tunes. The sextet began with promising goofiness, all lying in a row with their heads toward the audience and gesturing with hands, feet, and heads in time to McFerrin's music. But then they reverted to stereotyped portraits of femininity, running in and out like innocent young girls. Then they sped through a desperate but still pretty lament. They reminded me of the lost souls in Alvin Ailey's House of the Rising Sun.

Drama manqué Sporen , by the Dutch company Leine & Roebana, had two false beginnings before settling down to an hour of movement exploration.

Steps . . . and more steps Martha Graham’s Steps in the Street doesn’t look anything like a dance of the 21st century, but at the end of Boston Conservatory’s fall program last weekend it fit right in.

Year in Dance: Reusable histories & durable trends Conservation is a good thing in these times, and some of the most interesting performances drew on the uses of history — personal history, performance history, and even some inventions that sought to overturn history.

Daniel Nagrin Daniel Nagrin was one of the last surviving stars of modern dance's second generation.

2009: The year in dance You could say there were two tremendous forces that propelled dance into the world of modern culture: the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev and the choreography of Merce Cunningham.

Old masters Last month, students at Boston Conservatory and Boston University paid tribute to two notables of modern dance's second generation in the best possible way: by performing their work.

From the inside Martha Graham created a revolution in the modern dance world on many fronts, most significantly by the emotional content and the sculptural form of her work.

Squiggles and lines The eponymous directors of Alonzo King Lines Ballet and the Mark Morris Dance Group both came from backgrounds in modern dance with sprinklings of other styles, and they both subsequently invented movement vocabularies to serve their choreographic ideas.

Golden years The last thing I had in mind when I went to the Opera House Tuesday was raining on Alvin Ailey's parade — particularly since the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, which he founded in 1959, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year while making its 41st annual Celebrity Series appearance in Boston.

Giant's steps Merce Cunningham's death on July 26 wasn't unexpected. He'd been in frail health since this past winter. He was in a wheelchair for his 90th-birthday celebration in April at Brooklyn Academy of Music. In June, the Cunningham Foundation announced plans for the future of the company and the repertory after his death.

JOFFREY BALLET GETS ITS DUE | May 08, 2012 New York has two great ballet companies, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Any other ballet troupe that wants to put down roots there has to develop a personality that's distinct from those two.

THE BOSTON BALLET’S DON QUIXOTE | May 01, 2012 In the long string of ballet productions extracted from Miguel de Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, the delusional Don has become a minor character, charging into situations where he shouldn't go and causing trouble instead of good works.